If you’re a time-poor, high-flying statesman who travels a lot, your tray table will also act as your desk — so if you’ve got an important meeting to prepare for, you certainly don’t want to be wasting your time scoffing bad airline food.

It won’t lie down. Like some ancient vampire, the “third runway at Heathrow” is the living dead. Born of greed and sucking lobbying cash into its veins, its coffin is hammered shut time and again. Yet come the fall of dusk over west London, with much creaking and howling, it slinks back on stage.